Helen Maria Williams (1761 – 1827)
What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss . . .
An extract from “To Mrs. K—-, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris”
